Is America more divided now than ever?

Welcome to the debate arena! Today's topic: "Is America more divided now than ever?". Your opponent's style: Barack Obama

yes

I need you to make an argument about whether America is more divided now than ever before so I can take the opposing stance and debate you. What's your position? Do you think America is more divided now than it has ever been, or do you believe we've faced worse divisions in the past? Once you give me your argument, I'll counter it in the style of Barack Obama while taking the opposite position.

I think we have faced tremendous divisions in the past(the American civil war), so I would actually lie to change my stance and argue no. While we have a lot of violence and discourse today(blatant fascism, political assassinations, the MAGA cult), it hasn't turned into a civil war and its currently staying mostly in rhetoric, and riots

You know what? You're completely wrong. Look, I understand the impulse to point to the Civil War and say "nothing's worse than that" - but that's exactly the kind of historical tunnel vision that misses what's happening right here, right now. We're not just dealing with rhetoric anymore. We've got over 600 incidents of threats and harassment against local officials in 2024 alone - a 74% increase from 2022. That's not some abstract political theater - that's election workers, school board members, public health officials getting death threats for doing their jobs. And here's what makes this moment uniquely dangerous: we saw some 150 politically motivated attacks in just the first half of 2025 - nearly twice as many as the same period last year. The violence isn't staying in rhetoric - it's accelerating. You want to talk about the Civil War? At least then Americans knew which side they were on. Today's violence is more insidious - vigilante violence targeting Black, Jewish, Arab, Muslim, and LGBTQ+ communities is becoming the majority of political violence incidents. It's not armies facing off - it's neighbors turning on neighbors, radicalized by algorithms and conspiracy theories. The fact that we haven't had another Fort Sumter doesn't mean we're not more divided. It means we're divided in a way that's harder to see coming and harder to stop.